I picked up the Interface and glanced over the menu it displayed. It was unfamiliar to me, but most likely it was part of the Creature menu.
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A list of your creatures by type. You may view their locations, manage their orders, or review the progress of their repopulation.
Common Rockworms: 25
| Locations | Manage Orders | Repopulation | Back | |
The submenus seemed to work by designating a Creature type, as expected. I glanced through the Location and Orders menus. Location was similar to the map in the Room menu, but there were little green dots to signify Creatures. Orders had a list of simple orders... Some of which I never said aloud or even thought in the presence of the Creatures. There was a standing order not to dig into my Core Room, for instance.
The really important one was Repopulation though. It opened a menu with a small summary of the Rockworms' reproductive needs and then a list of progress bars. Like, actual progress bars, with an estimated time to completion. There were a lot of bars too, each one with different times remaining. In pairs, each one was separated by about an hour, with a little over a day to complete from the beginning.
Reading the description, I thought I understood what I hadn't grasped before... The Rockworms usually ate a certain amount of stone, and then laid their eggs. Somehow, the dungeon was taking care of their eggs without forcing them to step away from their work. Meaning that every time they ate enough stone to lay eggs, the repop bar would start, and the worms would get back to eating stone. Apparently for the Common Rockworms, it took about an hour to eat enough stone to trigger a repop.
But... There were going to be a lot of Rockworms at this rate. Scrolling to the bottom, I saw that the first batch had already triggered a repop, since there was a new batch of fourteen bars at nearly the same time. Then the next batch would include the current twenty five Rockworms... Wouldn't there be thousands of the things in a few days?
That... Shouldn't have been a bad thing. With so many, even the Common Rockworms would be able to dig large rooms for me. But that would just result in more Rockworms... Maybe I could limit the maximum population, somehow or... Normally they would be eaten by something. But adding a new creature just to reduce my digging speed was a dumb plan, right?
And having more creatures would increase my CP regeneration as well... There was literally no reason to be upset about this. The more the merrier. Maybe this feeling was a holdover? It was in the news all the time, that the world was going to be overpopulated and fall into catastrophe. But as long as I had stone, that wouldn't happen here, right? I already knew it was possible to create stone. It was one of the basic functions of Earth magic. Since Earth magic would also be needed to create and enhance my dungeon's defenses, I would need it anyways.
Then the only factor that would interfere... Was the actual size of the dungeon. My status mentioned a floor count, so presumably I could multiply my floor space by increasing that. That meant I would always have need of a quick way to dig out floor space. The tunnel to the Gate should have been half the size of the floor, assuming my Core started in the middle. A little bit of math later... Wow, this place was big.
Still, I was having trouble figuring out how many Worms I would have. I found a few formulas that I thought were accurate, but the numbers I was getting were so big I couldn't comprehend them. No way that's accurate. Ugh, I wish the Refinement pattern made me smarter, too. I couldn't tell how long it would take them to dig out and then overfill the space. Whatever, I'll try to limit their max population for now.
The Orders menu was pretty bare. There were no buttons, just a list of commands. So, I tried thinking about what I wanted. When that didn't work immediately, I narrowed down my intentions. 'Only eat enough stone to sustain the current population once it reaches one hundred thousand.' The order appeared on the screen. It wasn't exactly what I'd been thinking of, but hopefully it would work as I intended. Or better?
Next I looked through the other Creatures' menus for any more surprises. The Contraption Fairy already had two repop bars with fifteen day timers. So it would take a long time to get started, but there should be quite a few by the end of the month. That was good, though I wondered if Geni would be any good as a teacher for the new ones.
The other Rockworms were about as expected... The Greater had a forty two hour repop bar every two hours, and the Oreworm and Elemental Rockworm had sixty hour timers every three hours. The first new Greater Rockworm would appear in twelve hours. All three species were significantly larger than the Common Rockworms, so a hundred thousand was probably too high as a limit... But they were also a lot more useful. I would have to let things continue for a while, then decide a good number later.
The Kindlesprite gave the next surprise. There was no repop timer. The description reminded me why. The repop timer would start when a Promethean Core formed, rather than when the Sculptor started working on it. So the Kindlesprites wouldn't be overpopulating my dungeon any time soon. Probably?
I briefly complained about my situation on the forums. However, most people had chosen to use creatures that used standard repop methods. Meaning their creatures needed some 'alone time' to trigger a repop bar. Though there was something called Conception magic, which allowed them to always trigger the repop timer instead of having to wait for a certain time of the month. With happy creatures, they could almost match my repop rates- but not quite. I was somewhat relieved that I didn't have to worry about walking in on anybody...
Well, what I learned is that I needed to get as many different types of creatures going as quickly as possible. Except I already knew that... My CP needed to be distributed between more Kindlesprites, who I wanted to be my primary subordinates, and different types of Fairies, who would hopefully act as support. My CP now... fourteen. Not enough yet.
Then, the next thing to look into... Spellbooks. Because I couldn't afford to waste any more CP than necessary teaching every Creature magic. Hmm. Let's ask Geni if she can make a spellbook. Unlikely, but it would be convenient.
They may be weak and small, but they eat STONE. Throw 100,000 of them at enemies when it comes to that, it's not a waste with the speed with which you repop, and you have an expendable army.... What I just said is kind of overkill, but it's not a bad tactic, to send 50,000 to fight a day and leaves 50,000 to dig and repop.
The Common Rockworms melt the stone using Earth magic, so their bite isn't as strong as it seems.
Still, I did think of that, lol. Actually, I was worried about the entire dungeon being a crawling carpet of Rockworms and drowning people.
So now there's a population cap.
@Cipiteca396 she should evolve them to have basic combat capacity and then use the overwhelming might of exponential growth to dominate the battlefield
@Opaillya Well, that's the basic idea of the dungeon. It's just that most monsters need more time to build up their growth.
As for using the evolution function on a small-fry like the Common Rockworm, it's usually less efficient than just starting with a stronger monster. Usually. Stay tuned~.
but most small fry don't have repop limited merely by square cube law preventing unlimited access to delicious stone
@Opaillya To clarify, if you tried to upgrade a Common Rockworm to be combat capable, it would need more food(stone) to repop. Although it might actually be a viable and vicious combatant, sneaky and strong like a facehugger from Aliens, it would be a tough question of whether it's worth the investment compared to a similarly priced Creature.
Most likely the answer would be, 'They're about equal.' It's not a bad decision at all though. The only thing stopping Selene from doing it is other priorities competing for her attention and CP.